


Across the Sea

by glimmerglanger



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fix It, Hurt/Comfort, Pirates, Post-Canon, Prompt: Shackles, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 07:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20962760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmerglanger/pseuds/glimmerglanger
Summary: Lording turned out to be little of what Gendry expected and even less of what he found out he wanted. There were schemers in his court and schemers outside of it. There were murmurs of unrest already from the Greyjoys, bitter about the North’s declared independence while they remained tied to the throne. There was talk of war musters in Dorne.Through it all, Gendry looked around the cold stone halls of his new keep and saw… little he wanted to keep.





	Across the Sea

Lording turned out to be little of what Gendry expected and even less of what he found out he wanted. There were schemers in his court and schemers outside of it. There were murmurs of unrest already from the Greyjoys, bitter about the North’s declared independence while they remained tied to the throne. There was talk of war musters in Dorne.

Through it all, Gendry looked around the cold stone halls of his new keep and saw… little he wanted to keep.

He left, after only a matter of months, fine clothes folded and left carefully in his bed chamber. They’d never fitted him right, anyway. He took what coin seemed owed him - technically, he supposed, it was _all_ his - and set forth, not sure where he’d go.

He ended up in Lannisport, all the glory of the city stripped away by the Lannister’s fall. Once fine walls had been pulled down, here and there. People moved through the streets fretfully, but the port itself remained functional. It was too large and useful to be destroyed or forgotten.

Gendry decided to seek passage on a boat on a whim. Sometimes he felt like he’d spent years of his life on the water, anyway. It hadn’t been a particularly _enjoyable_ time, but there was a familiarity to the tang of salt air on his tongue, an openness to the sky over the water that appealed after the long months locked away in a keep.

And somewhere out on the water, of course, Arya sailed off, looking for the extremity of the world.

He knew he’d never find her. He boarded a ship, anyway. The sea, out beyond the port, was free of ice. The horizon stretched away blue, offering an escape from the years of winter that curled close around Westeros.

#

Working as a sailor passed the time agreeably enough. There was food to eat, most of it tasteless and hard to chew. There was space below deck to sleep, crowded in with the rest of the crew so closely that they managed to stay warm through the night. There was enough physically demanding work that he barely dreamed.

It was… Peace, of a sort. The kind Gendry hadn’t realized he wanted until he got it.

It didn’t last. He was sleeping in his bunk when the watch above decks started sounding alarms. By the time he’d reached the deck, they were being boarded by dark clad fingers, two ships around their little merchant craft.

The sails of the other ships were dyed black, near invisible in the night, identifiable only by the stars they blocked out.

Pirates, he thought, smelling blood and listening to people scream. He fought, because there was nothing else to do, but it was a losing proposition and he knew that, knew it even before the captain of his ship was skewered, knew it even before the fighting stopped, knew it even before a man with flashing eyes and a curving smile knocked him on the side of the head and sent him down to blackness.

#

Gendry woke up in chains, slumped in the hold with the rest of the survivors of his crew. Someone wept. The hold stank of old blood and wounds gone untended. “Where are we going?” he asked, around the aching in his head. 

No one could tell him. There was nothing to do but wait, leaning against the creaking hull of the ship, working his wrists back and forth in the shackles, wearing away the skin around his wrists, fresh blood sliding down his skin.

#

They were going, it turned out, to a small island that seemed made entirely of ports. Ships docked there, ships such as he’d never seen or even imagined. They were drawn out, prodded down docks all in a row. Gendry swayed as he walked, too used to being on a ship, and hungry, hurt, tired.

He wasn’t taken onto the island proper. Instead, the crew that had taken his ship directed his group through the maze of the docks, to a larger ship, one with dozens of oars along the sides and eyes painted on the bow.

They led him up a ramp onto the ship. The deck was scarred, here and there, with burn marks and gouges in the wood. He didn’t get much time to examine it before he was nudged down into a hold, following the man in front of him, into a dark space that stank of sweat and fear and death.

There were benches, down there. Rows and rows of benches. Some of them were occupied by hollow-eyed men, chained by their feet to the benches, their hands resting on the oar handles at each station.

Someone shoved Gendry towards an open space. “Wait,” he said, tongue heavy in his mouth. He pushed back against the sailor pulling on him, and was cuffed across the back of his head for his trouble. He ignored the sharp pain. He had a terrible feeling about what, exactly, would happen if they managed to chain him to the bench.

And so he fought, managed to hurt a few of them bad enough that they stopped moving, even. But there were too many of them and only one of him, with chains around his wrists and exhaustion beating him from the inside.

The beat him until he couldn’t fight them anymore, and then they dragged him up onto the bench, leaving him slumped across the oar as they closed the shackles around his ankles. He spat blood down onto the deck, ears ringing, as they moved on to the next man.

#

They rowed, all the men in the hold, chained to the benches. The entire world narrowed down just to that space. The ceiling was only a few feet overhead. Gendry would need to duck, if he ever stood up again, but that looked increasingly unlikely.

They were never released. Sometimes, the crew came down and poured sea water over them, the salt stinging unhealed wounds and plastering cloth to their skin, getting between their palms and the oars, burning like fire in the blisters that formed over Gendry’s fingers and hands.

They were given water and food, sometimes. Never enough to slack their thirst or satisfy their hunger. Occasionally they were told to stop rowing, and noises came from beyond the dark hold, terrible noises, screams and weeping and all the nightmare sounds that came to Gendry too often in dreams.

His hands blistered. His shoulders burned. His lips cracked. Time slid past, one day much the same as the other in the cramped dark. The ocean beat against the side of the boat constantly. Men around him wept. Sometimes they died. Sometimes their bodies were removed.

He realized, in an increasingly fleeting moment of clarity, that he ought to have stayed back in Westeros, playing lord, instead of wandering out to sea to die in hell. But that option was long gone and far away. He’d always realized what he should have done too late to take the proper steps.

The only things that remained to him were the shackles and the oars and the despair in his chest.

#

Time passed. Gendry had no idea how much of it. Many of the men that he’d been brought in with died. More men were brought in to replace them. He survived, persisting despite all desire to the contrary, of a hardy constitution and strong from all the years before the forge.

He was still alive, or at least still breathing, when the ship shook in the water. Screams came from above deck, but that happened, sometimes. He smelled smoke over the salt on the air, smoke and blood. 

It was of no note. It would pass. It always did.

When it did, as he’d known it would, it was with the hatch to the hold opening. Faint light streamed down into his dark underworld, ghost pale. There were footsteps on the steps, which was unusual, but perhaps the crew had taken prisoners to set before the oars. That happened, sometimes.

A golden light descended into the hold. A lantern, he realized, after a moment, held up, casting burning light across their faces. “Well,” a voice said, a _familiar_ voice, one he’d know anywhere, “let’s see what we’ve got here, shall we? Ah, more slaves.”

He squinted against the burn of the light, his eyes so long unaccustomed to it. He could make out a slim figure on the stairs, his heart beating suddenly faster in his chest, something very much like hope stirring within his ribs. He could not make the figure out clearly, but it mattered little. He worked moisture into his mouth, as much as possible, and croaked, “Arya?”

The figure paused, for just a moment, and then continued forward, bringing the stinging light along. “Gendry?” she asked, and it _was her_. She’d found him, somehow, in the middle of the vast ocean, coming to lean over him, lantern held up, her eyes darting over his face, his body, the oars.

“Yes,” he said, because he knew not what else to say, joy and relief burning hot behind his eyes.

Her mouth went hard, then, the way he’d grown used to seeing her expression chill into something like stone. She turned and yelled, over her shoulder, “Find the keys to these chains. Now!”

#

The following hour felt like a dream, probably because Gendry had dreamed something similar too many times since they chained him in the hold. A sailor, one armed to the teeth, brought the keys and opened the locks around Gendry’s ankles and his wrists before moving onward.

“Take him,” Arya had said, to another sailor - they all seemed to be listening to her - gesturing at Gendry. “See that he’s fed and cleaned up.”

“Arya,” Gendry started, when unfamiliar hands pulled him up. His legs had forgotten how to work. He reached out to her, finding her arm. She looked down at his hand; he felt her startle beneath his touch, but she did not jerk away.

She only said, “I’ll return shortly.”

And that must have been dismissal, because the sailor supporting Gendry turned and led him to the stairs, up into the cool morning air, where the sun stung his eyes and the fresh air choked his throat.

#

He was taken to another ship, one waiting alongside his prior prison. He was bathed in icy water, his clothes taken away, thank the Seven. Unfamiliar hands cut off the tangled growth of his hair. His hands were bandaged. He was dried. Clean clothes were tugged onto him. And he was taken across the ship, into a cabin with a bed and a table laden with food and drink.

They left him there. He sat down, after a moment, on the bed. There was nowhere else to sit. He picked up an apple, small and out-of-season, and raised it to his nose, drawing in a deep breath because his throat felt temporarily too tight to eat.

He swallowed a few times, breathing in and out, and finally took a bite.

He ate the whole of it, the white flesh, the red skin, the core, and the stem. There was bread, as well, and cheese, and water, and wine, and Gendry ate until he felt he would vomit if he took another bite.

It did not take very long. His stomach had grown small in the hold of the other ship. Plenty of food remained by the time he could swallow no more.

The door opened as he stared at the remnants of the meal. Arya stepped in. His eyes had adjusted to the light, finally, and he saw her clearly. She wore her hair pulled back and braided, now, the dark strands carefully contained. She wore lighter armor, thinner shoes, more suited for moving quickly about a ship. Two swords hung on her belt, Needle and a blade that looked of Braavosi make. 

She closed the door at her back and said, “Did you get enough to eat?”

“I did.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

She waved a hand, still standing at the doorway, watching him. The dark regard of her gaze had not changed. She still watched him with an intensity he’d never understood, one that left him feeling like a mouse beneath the gaze of a cat that hadn’t yet determined how to pass the next few hours. She asked, after a moment, “How did a fine lord such as yourself end up in the hold of a brigand’s ship?”

“I’m no lord,” he said. He never had been, just played at being one for a little while, at the worst time possible. “I… I left. Went sailing. My ship was captured. I… don’t know when.”

She only stared at him, for some impossible amount of time, unblinking, before she said, head tilting to the side, “You know, if you’d wanted to come along, all you had to do was ask.”

He blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the burn behind his eyes. “I’m not sure I knew that.”

“Well,” she said, narrowing her eyes a bit, “then you were a fool.”

“I have been many times,” he admitted. It seemed clear enough. No one but a food would have given up a lordship and struck out across the western sea in the vague hope that… what? That he would find her. But he _had_ found her. Or, rather, she’d found him. He swallowed. “I hoped that the captain might let me stay aboard, anyway.”

She moved soundlessly when she stepped towards him. The cabin was not large. A few steps brought her to him. Even with him sitting, she was not much taller. He still had to tilt his head back to look at her when she said, “There’s not much work for a blacksmith on a ship.”

It felt like a negotiation, like one of the deals he’d attempted to make during his brief tenure as a lord. He said, quietly, “I can find someway to serve, if you’ll have me.”

She hummed, just a little. She reached out, fingers brushing across his forehead and down the side of his face. He shivered. It had been so long since someone touched him without violent intent. He pushed into the touch, and she made a little hitching sound, leaning down all at once, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

He tilted his face up to her, a hundred dearly held memories beating against his thoughts, all the hopes he’d thought lost after the war. She cupped his face, kissed his cheek, and said, “Aye, I’ll have you,” in the second before she kissed his mouth.


End file.
